Former Army Intelligence Officer Talks About Malaysian Plane Crash

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAAY) - A Huntsville missionary who has led mission trips to Ukraine for several years says the area where a Malaysian Airlines flight crashed Thursday is an area where many people feel the Ukrainian government does not speak for them.

"This is very interesting because the plane was on course," Jack Parker said. "Any military should have known this was a civilian aircraft, and it should have been off-limits for any hostile action. It'll be some time before I suspect we really know what happened."

Parker is a former Army intelligence officer who was stationed in Ukraine for a large part of his military career. He has led mission trips there with people from several Baptist churches in Huntsville nearly every year since 1990.

This year, Parker did not send a group because of the unrest in the region.

"We chose not to go because the area we would have been going to was in the midst of all the troubles," Parker said.